Belgrade Journal; For Partying Mobsters, the Morning After: Prison

By PETER S. GREEN

Published: May 5, 2003

BELGRADE, Serbia—
They line up most days outside Central Prison in Belgrade dressed in elegant finery, the women in faux Chanel or tailored Italian slacks, the men in dark glasses and dark suits over black T-shirts. They clutch Louis Vuitton purses and mobile phones, the men perhaps chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and the women puffing nervously on Davidoff Lights, a local favorite.

These are the remnants of Belgrade's former elite -- the wives, girlfriends and lawyers of some of the thousands of suspected organized crime figures and war criminals jailed since the killing of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic on March 12.

So far, at least 45 people have been charged in the killing, including former government officials and members of the Red Berets, a police unit linked to some of the worst atrocities of the Balkan wars.

The people lined up here are loath to talk to strangers as they clutch gym bags and plastic sacks of the clothing, food and medicine they are allowed to leave at the prison gate.

''I'll tell you how bad it is, they're arresting the lawyers!'' shouted one tall young man clutching a tiny cellphone.

For the decade under Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, and well into Serbia's democratic transition, Belgrade was a playground for what locals came to call the ''Mafija.'' These were the thugs, gangsters and paramilitary goons who oscillated between running their own criminal networks and murdering, raping and looting in the orchestrated frenzy of ethnic cleansing that rent apart what was Yugoslavia.

The trademarks of these mafiosi were flashy cars, short haircuts and clothing somewhere between Nike warm-ups and the Italian Riviera. They paraded down Belgrade's main streets in luxury sedans and S.U.V.'s, hung their coats at top nightclubs and traveled with retinues of ripple-muscled bodyguards.

The airwaves and the covers of the gossip magazines were ruled by women like Svetlana Raznatovic, the widow of Zeljko Raznatovic, a k a Arkan, leader of the Tigers, a notorious paramilitary group. Ms. Raznatovic, nicknamed Ceca, was a star of turbo-folk, a cacophonous blend of Serbian folk tunes and contemporary electro-pop.

''Everything was in one house,'' said Veran Matic, editor in chief of B-92, an independent radio and television network. ''Politics was criminalized and crime was politicized. Arkan was a criminal, a war criminal -- and president of a political party, a member of Parliament and owner of the biggest music star in the country. They determined the values of Serbian society.''

Even after Mr. Milosevic, now on trial for war crimes in The Hague, was ousted in October 2000, the mafia and suspected war criminals held Belgrade in their sway, running extortion rackets and drug rings, kidnapping businessmen who opposed them and often taking over nightclubs at gunpoint on Belgrade's lively after-hours scene.

Their world collapsed in March after Prime Minister Djindjic was shot. In the post-assassination crackdown, the police arrested 10,111 people and jailed more than 4,500 of them. The biggest fish still out of jail is the Red Berets' former leader, Milorad Lukovic, also known as Legija.

''We can say today that we have dealt a crucial blow to organized crime,'' Natasa Micic, Serbia's acting president, said on national television. ''We have dismantled Milosevic's criminal apparatus and severed a spiral of crime that has ravaged our country for more than a decade.''

With so many big spenders behind bars, local wags have taken to calling the Central Prison the Central Business Center, after the suburban New Belgrade Business Center, a shopping mall often frequented by gangsters.

At the Sava Center, another convention hall whose indoor shopping mall was a mafia favorite, the shops are now virtually empty.

''Business is not good,'' noted Natasa, a sales clerk, who said infamous war criminals and gangsters were among the customers who had stopped coming by for the latest in Italian suits and silk ties. Business, she said, is down 20 percent or more.

In another shop, Bojana Jakovljevic, selling leather jackets, said: ''It's a big loss for the store, but, paah, it's better now. I can walk at midnight wherever I want.''

The pressure on the mob has apparently also created a panic among Belgrade's drug users. Since the police began their crackdown in March, rehabilitation clinics have been full.

At Sova, an elegantly modern downtown nightclub, the goons and their girlfriends were noticeably absent on a recent Saturday night as a young woman gyrated on the bar and youngsters in fashionably tight clothes moved to a pounding techno beat. Sova's owner, Djordjije Stajkic, said business was down 10 to 15 percent since the movements of some of his more illustrious clients had been restricted.

That is an improvement on the old days, he said, even though the gangsters were often big spenders.

''When Legija came, 50 percent of the club would leave,'' Mr. Stajkic said. ''It was not very good for business. It used to be a curse in my business -- 'I hope that Legija comes to your place.' ''

Now, he said, the gangsters have been replaced by a new group of free spenders.

''There are young people opening up Champagne and whiskey bottles who didn't use to,'' Mr. Stajkic said. ''Now they feel it's their territory.''

In fact, Mr. Stajkic said, he has already laid off half the bouncers who used to guard his bar.

''People were openly terrorized in Belgrade by Legija and the others,'' said Jovan Dulovic, chief crime reporter for the weekly magazine Vreme. ''He would walk into a cafe and force everyone to do push-ups. They would close whole streets when he went out.''